


The Well-Fashioned Paladin

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mycroft-centric, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-22 23:43:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2526026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was forced upon me by a lovely article I read today, that I've both quoted and linked in the beginning of the story.<br/>The story is profoundly Mycroft-centric. Even Lestrade and Anthea are very limited background characters. This is a story about the paladin in Saville Row bespoke.</p><p>I am rather pleased with this one. It's gen as gen can be, really, and a character study--but there's a minor bit of adventure embedded in it, and I like the portrait. Heaven only knows if this is any relation to Gatiss' Mycroft--but until he and the rest of hte team prove otherwise, this is *my* Mycroft.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Well-Fashioned Paladin

You think you wear the suit: the suit wears you. It is woven magic, necromancy, the black art that hides in plain sight. No one knows or can say what the spell of the suit is, or how it works, but still it exudes its inoffensive writ.

 

A.A. Gill, [“The Suit is the Greatest British Invention,”](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119789/suit-greatest-british-invention?utm_content=buffer0f103&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer) The New Republic, 10/10/2014

 

“We’ve heard from them, sir,” Anthea said. “Arved and his people have run tests on the recordings. They’re fairly sure it really is your brother and Dr. Watson, and that they were alive and more or less whole at the time of contact.”

“Thank you,” Mycroft said, calmly. “And the rendezvous has been set?”

“Yes, sir. Two hours, the old disused passages of Charing Cross station.”

He considered correcting her, pointing out that the passages had been part of Trafalgar station not subsumed into the current arrangement known as Charing Cross station. He determined that it was insufficiently amusing to justify the pedantry. Instead he said, “Lestrade’s been kept informed?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s assured us they’ll have operatives on site and plenty of surveillance coverage. You won’t be without eyes or backup.”

He smiled tightly. He was sure she and Lestrade believed that with every fiber of their beings. He would not go down alone if they could do anything to prevent it. The passages would be bugged. The operatives would be onsite, even if the only way to hide them was to cement them into the walls like poor unfortunate Fortunato, in the _Cask of Amontillado._ (And, he thought, if he survived this…and Sherlock survived…and, he supposed, if Sherlock’s faithful goldfish Watson survived…then he really did have to purchase a new order of Amontillado…)

The thing was, in the end it was still him and a covy of crazed terrorists in a sub-basement of the Tube, bargaining for the lives of those two stubborn, reckless idiots. Whom, it must be pointed out, had got themselves into the wretched mess they currently occupied. If they died it was at least due to their own idiotic overconfidence. If he died it was because in the end, well…

He stood wearily and paced over to the closet hidden tastefully behind one wall panel of his office. He popped the latch, opened the door, and looked in with a sigh.

If he died it would be because he wore the suit. Or, perhaps, the suit wore him. Either way, someone would walk down into the earth to negotiate with madmen, and that someone would be him, in his slim, dark charcoal pinstripe, without even his umbrella to raise suspicion. He wondered if he would find Sherlock and Watson alive—or be greeted by two heads bleeding sluggishly onto the concrete pavement and a row of armed enemies ready to add his to the line-up.

He traced a lapel with one finger. The edge was crisp—tightly turned, tightly sewn, and ironed with a stern, commanding hand. The poppy from Remembrance day was still in the buttonhole, steadied by its little thread loop in back. He considered removing it, and decided not. It added yet another level of visual and cognitive distraction—one more feint to distract his enemies—and if he were to die, he thought he would as soon die wearing the poppy.

He went to the little bathroom off the office and showered. He shaved and brushed his teeth. He put on deodorant, as he wasn’t so cocky as to think he wouldn’t be sweating tonight. He put on cologne because it buoyed his spirits. He put on his shorts, his socks and sock garters, but stopped short at his vest. He went out to the office and called Anthea.

“Send Motram in to put on the wires and slip the tracer in,” he said, then waited until the middle-aged woman arrived.

“We’re keeping it to a minimum, sir,” she said, handing him the little capsule with a glass of water.

“GPS?” he said, looking at it dubiously.

“Yes, sir. Drink it down and we’ll be able to track you clear as clear, at least until…”

“Until the digestive process prevails?”

“Urm, yes. Sir.”

He considered. If the terrorists had a GPS scanning device, they’d know he was tagged. If they knew he was tagged, the odds were better than average they’d simply kill him where he stood, and leave. He closed his eyes and said, with some reluctance, “Better not. Better to have everyone on the _qui vive._ Visual surveillance, CCTV, and plenty of people ready to follow at a distance. If you can bug their vehicle, though, go for it.”

She nodded reluctantly, and put the pill and glass aside on his desk before she and her assistant carefully, respectfully planted their tiny mics all over him. They even managed to hide a minute fiber optic camera in his thinning hair.

Mycroft suspected all that meant in the end was that someone would have a superb recording of his last view if he was killed. Still, he might get lucky and have compelling data for future investigations as well as a view of the abandoned tunnel ceiling from a position on the floor…

When she was done she and her assistant left, and Mycroft was free to continue dressing himself.

He checked the slim resin picks that stayed permanently hidden in the pierced sheathes that ran along his Achilles tendons. He strapped on the elegant, deadly resin knives along his ankles—fine and easily missed under the firm weave of his woolen trousers.

There were many reasons to wear a suit, he thought, among the most traditional being the secrets a suit so reliably hid from sight. He wondered if he’d be searched tonight—if the rendezvous would sort itself that way or not? Which of his hidden weapons would they find? The shoulder-holstered Walther PPK was unlikely to slip past them. The vicious little daggers hidden in the soles of his shoes, where they doubled quite conveniently as arch support? Far more likely to make it past all but a very thorough inspection. The various garrotes and deadly piano wire loops? Very unlikely to be found indeed. He’d considered poisoned darts, once, and indeed had a few stashed in the hollow shaft of his brolly, but on the whole there was something too fraught about poison darts—it verged on caricature.

Each layer of clothing hid something; contained something. Each could be used in some way, because in a pinch everything is a weapon. A jacket can serve to ward off a blade and distract an enemy’s aim. A tie can choke and bind.

Most of all, he thought, stilling his pounding pulse, a suit hides the man who wears it. There was a reason he wore suits. They lied, and lied, and lied. They said to the world, “This man is confident.” They said, “This man is vain and too foolish to care if you know it.” Suits said, “This man works a desk job. He minces the streets of London. He seldom does anything more violent than jump the queue at his favorite restaurant.”

His suits hid the piano wire. They hid the pistol. They hid the pulse in his neck, and the tension in his back.

“Are you ready, sir?” Anthea asked.

“Almost,” he said, and swung the jacket on over his tidy soot-black waistcoat. His pocket watch (complete with cyanide capsule) sat firmly in his watch pocket, and his watch-chain and fob swung gently against the dark wool.

 

oOo

 

“Oh for the love of God, Mycroft, give over,” Sherlock snarled later that night. “Whine-whine-whine. We were captured. Yes. I concede I rather failed to predict that. But they never even got a chance to torture us, much less kill us, and we came away with information no one else could have obtained.” He glanced at his partner, and added, with that maddening post-coital smirk he always affected after events like this, “And think of the fun we had!”

“Has it occurred to you that you and your friend are only alive due to a combination of diplomacy and subterfuge on the part of Lestrade’s and my people?”

“Hardly,” Sherlock huffed. “If you’d given us another few hours we’d have managed to work our own way out. I had our guard half-way to letting us loose if we’d just help him work out which of his fellows ordered the death of his cousin’s sister.”

“They intended to have killed you before another hour,”Lestrade growled.

“But they didn’t,” Watson snapped back, as always frustrated that the older two men never seemed to stand in sufficient awe of the intelligence and clever genius of his friend and idol. “Sherlock had it all worked out.”

Lestrade sighed, and caught Mycroft’s eye. Mycroft returned a small grimace, and a microscopic shrug, then said, simply, “Very well, I’m done for the night. Lestrade, I can offer you a lift home, if you like?”

“Sorry, got a ride already, and a date to file reports,” the other man said, regretfully. “I can give you a ring when I’m done. Wouldn’t mind a drink at the Diogenes if you’re going over.”

Mycroft nodded, but said, “I’ll let you know if I do, but I do doubt it. I have my own reports to turn in, and I’m…tired.” He closed his eyes for a second, fighting down the deep weariness that threatened to sweep him away. The adrenaline of the final face-off still shook him.

They hadn’t found the Walther—they hadn’t even thought to look. They hadn’t found anything. They’d taken him for what they saw: a city man. A man in a three piece suit, out of place in the arching passages, helpless in the deep cellars of the earth, with the roar of the ventilators filling the air. They’d seen a sad, weak witness, a symbol of British ineffectuality, and they hadn’t even been prepared to search him properly.

What they had been prepared to do—what Sherlock and Watson had not properly seen—was to take their hostages heads in front of Sherlock’s brother, expecting him to be alone, to be helpless. To not just wear a suit—to be a suit. An empty suit.

They’d had swords…beautiful swords. Mycroft wanted to learn, later, where the beautiful Damascene scimitars had come from, with their gilt basket handles and their ivory hilts and the amazing cabochon rubies ornamenting the butt of the hilt… They were old pieces. Mycroft wasn’t sure if they went back to Persian courts, or Moghul palaces, or all the way back to the court of Genghis Khan himself. His own bet was to the Moghuls—the work reminded him of the beautiful work of the Taj Mahal—and there were many Muslims in India and Pakistan who still bore legitimate grudges going back all the way to the Raj and before. Beautiful blades, they were. Simply beautiful…

There had been two swordsmen stationed behind Sherlock and Watson; stationed where the bound men could not see as they knelt on the concrete floor. Mycroft, though, could see. Mycroft was intended to see. The leader had smiled.

“You’re not going to get far with this,” Mycroft had said, keeping his voice calm. Let them see what they expected—not a complete simpleton or a fool, but the sort to bluster and bluff long after the game was lost.

“Far enough. Your brother and his friend will die. If I am feeling generous, I will let you take their heads back with you, so their families can bury them.” The leader had turned his head, then, to signal the executioners.

Mycroft had moved, one hand drawing the Walter, the other pressing the alarm that cued Lestrade and his people into action. Mycroft took the executioners first, ignoring the leader’s gun trained on his chest, on the white shirt and the soot black waistcoat with its swinging gold watch chain, the gun aimed at his crimson tie echoing the bloody flash of the poppy In his lapel.

He thought it was probably one of Lestrade’s people who took the leader down. He wasn’t sure, though. Someone had shot at him, but it was after the leader fell—he knew that. They’d missed, but he’d felt the smack of concrete chips when the bullet caromed into the wall behind him.

He said good night to Lestrade. He exchanged a last surly, “Yes, yes, do be quiet, Sherlock, we’ll discuss it tomorrow,” with his brother. He got in the black car and returned to the office, where he sent Anthea home, filled out his report, then, tired, opened the closet again.

He stripped off the suit, hanging each piece as it came off, putting away each element of his weaponry and armor. Cufflinks, tie bar, stickpin, watch with accoutrements…those in the little jewelry casket set on the miniature chest of drawers in the closet. All of the weapons except the little resin picks were put away in their various places. The shirt was set aside to be sent out for laundering. Trousers hung upside down in a trouser clip, their creases kept immaculate. Waist coat on the secondary hanger, and finally the jacket on the primary hanger.

Only then did Mycroft strip off the mics and cameras and potter sleepily to the washroom, planning to brush his teeth and return to his office for a night on the sofa, as it was far too late to seriously consider returning to his rooms on Pall Mall. There, looking in the mirror, he saw what the suit had obscured.

A tired man, a man worn from hours of fear for his brother, a man who’d more than half expected to die himself that night. A man more and more unhappy with footwork and field assignments. A man who didn’t know himself which was the real him—the man who feared for his brother, or the man in the suit, who didn’t care, so long as in the end the accounts balanced and the nation was secured.

In the end he was the man who knelt in front of the loo and vomited from the adrenaline let-down, grateful beyond words that at least he’d eaten lightly, and that the GPS beacon had been left on the desk beside the glass of water. Somehow it would have been too revealing of the man inside the suit to have Motram’s agents tracing the slow progress of the beacon from the loo to some distant sewage plant, evidence of the mere mortal humanity that hid behind the beautiful bespoke wool suiting.

 

 **NOTE:** The station mentioned is real, and the tunnels/passages can be seen [here](http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/Trafalgar_Square_station.html).


End file.
